"Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You." —Psalm 119:11

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Memorizing Speed > Study Speed

A few years ago it was my honor to mentor a member of the high school class of 2010. I had been finishing memorizing Romans while we were studying the book of James together. We decided to follow that study up with Philippians and also both memorize the book together.

The biggest surprise of that was how much faster we were at memorizing the book than studying it. Neither of us expected that, but the math makes sense. We were both memorizing a couple verses a day, but we only met once a week for an hour or so. It turned out to be quite easy for our memorizing to outpace our discussing.

This also greatly enhanced our familiarity with the text we were discussing.
When one simply reads a text, it's easy to skim over things like greetings and introductions and not make much of those words that are also part of the inspired Word of God. Take for instance, “the bishops and deacons” in verse 1. Since I was memorizing that (and also trying not to confuse the opening of Philippians with the opening of Romans), I paid more attention to the words.